Offline, I couldn't find stats or signals to help me discuss the matter. Offline, I tried it without help. "I don't think so. I don't think they've got soul, I don't think they've got history, I don't think they've got any kind of connection to the past. The world grew up in the Disneys -- they visit this place for continuity as much as for entertainment. We provide that." I'm offline, and they're not -- what the hell happened? "It'll be okay, Lil. There's nothing in that place that's better than us. Different and new, but not better. You know that -- you've spent more time in the Mansion than anyone, you know how much refinement, how much work there is in there. How can something they whipped up in a couple weeks possibly be better that this thing we've been maintaining for all these years?" She ground the back of her sleeve against her eyes and smiled. "Sorry," she said. Her nose was red, her eyes puffy, her freckles livid over the flush of her cheeks. "Sorry -- it's just shocking. Maybe you're right. And even if you're not -- hey, that's the whole point of a meritocracy, right? The best stuff survives, everything else gets supplanted. "Oh, shit, I hate how I look when I cry," she said. "Let's go congratulate them." As I took her hand, I was obscurely pleased with myself for having improved her mood without artificial assistance. # Dan was nowhere to be seen as Lil and I mounted the stage at the Hall, where Debra's ad-hocs and a knot of well-wishers were celebrating by passing a rock around. Debra had lost the tailcoat and hat, and was in an extreme state of relaxation, arms around the shoulders of two of her cronies, pipe between her teeth. She grinned around the pipe as Lil and I stumbled through some insincere compliments, nodded, and toked heavily while Tim applied a torch to the bowl. "Thanks," she said, laconically. "It was a team effort." She hugged her cronies to her, almost knocking their heads together. Lil said, "What's your timeline, then?" Debra started unreeling a long spiel about critical paths, milestones, requirements meetings, and I tuned her out. Ad-hocs were crazy for that process stuff. I stared at my feet, at the floorboards, and realized that they weren't floorboards at all, but faux-finish painted over a copper mesh -- a Faraday cage. That's why the HERF gun hadn't done anything; that's why they'd been so casual about working with the shielding off their computers. With my eye, I followed the copper shielding around the entire stage and up the walls, where it disappeared into the ceiling. Once again, I was struck by the evolvedness of Debra's ad-hocs, how their trial by fire in China had armored them against the kind of bush-league jiggery-pokery that the fuzzy bunnies in Florida -- myself included -- came up with.